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Notes from all over: CMI on Steam; Mojo socializes; Tim borrowed money from Will Wright

Want yet another copy of Curse of Monkey Island? Steam just added added the game, so go grab it if you so wish. Windows only, natch.Breaking news! Now also on macOS. For the first time? Breaking-er news! As reported by Laserschwert, GOG has also made it available. Get each and every version!

Speaking of Monkey Island, we’re currently running three Twitter polls, asking how you feel about the three last games. Cast your votes: CMI, EMI, TMI. Trust us, it’s for science.

In a shock move, we’ve started updating our YouTube account. A few videos and the Amiga version of the MI1 soundtrack are already there. Don’t be a jerk -- go subscribe. Having more than 90,000 views and only 66 subscribers is just ridiculous.

Finally, Tim received his lifetime achievement award last night. Part of his speech included a story about Will "Sim Everything" Wright giving Double Fine a bunch of money for the company to stay afloat after Microsoft dumped Psychonauts. Read the whole story.

Breaking-est news! While it has been available at Steam for a while, Maniac Mansion has also been added to GOG. The only logical conclusion is that Monkey Island 6 and Maniac Mansion 3 will be announced in a short time.

What does everyone else think about this?

This is a historic moment in GOG and Mojo history. I assume that Escape is just around the corner, assuming of course they're able to fix some of the bugginess.

EMI may not be a foregone conclusion. With the SCUMM games, Disney didn't have to lift one finger to make them runnable on modern Windows because they could just bundle SCUMMVM. With EMI, they might actually have to make a new executable. A level of effort anywhere above zero may be enough to make them not bother. Happy to be proven too cynical, though.

ResidualVM plays all the way through Escape from Monkey Island just fine now. Although, it hasn't been added to a stable release yet, so it's possible we would have to wait for that.

Back when I had my Intel PC with hyper-threading, with the LucasArts executable, Escape from Monkey Island would crash right after the coal puzzle on the ship in the intro.

Turning off hyper-threading in the bios did the trick to make it playable, but that's definitely not ideal and would probably cause complaints should a digital release be made with the original executable.

I bet Benny's launcher still works, but to discourage pirated copies of the game his software expects the game's registry keys to be installed, and I'll be damned if I'm going to exert the effort necessary to pull out my CDs and external disc drive. Now that an absence of registry keys doesn't necessarily mean you have a bootlegged copy, and chance of an update, Benny? ;

Someone with an installation could make a .reg file with the keys and pass that around.

You dirty pirates!
It doesnt need the reg keys for piracy purposes - its so that it knows where the game is installed and can change all the settings. I added a nocd patch in the last version to make it easier for someone to experience the misery of EMI play cd free. But without those reg keys it cant do the nocd patch, do the resolution patch, launch the game or change settings like direct32/opengl.
In theory I could update it so you just tell it where the game files are, but you know, lazyness. In the meantime adding the reg keys would do the job.

I think people are giving too much credit to Disney here, because I'm pretty sure we have to thank the tenacity of the GOG people here. I doubt Disney just decided to suddenly release these games. Furthermore, regarding making things work, I know for a fact that GOG has it's own group who tries to make things run on modern systems, so getting EMI to work would probably not something Disney would tackle themselves anyway.

However, I have got no idea how all of this works regarding Steam releases.

I bet Benny's launcher still works, but to discourage pirated copies of the game his software expects the game's registry keys to be installed, and I'll be damned if I'm going to exert the effort necessary to pull out my CDs and external disc drive. Now that an absence of registry keys doesn't necessarily mean you have a bootlegged copy, and chance of an update, Benny? ;

Someone with an installation could make a .reg file with the keys and pass that around.

This is a historic moment in GOG and Mojo history. I assume that Escape is just around the corner, assuming of course they're able to fix some of the bugginess.

EMI may not be a foregone conclusion. With the SCUMM games, Disney didn't have to lift one finger to make them runnable on modern Windows because they could just bundle SCUMMVM. With EMI, they might actually have to make a new executable. A level of effort anywhere above zero may be enough to make them not bother. Happy to be proven too cynical, though.

Since it runs on SCUMMVM, can anyone attest that iMUSE works? I recall the transitions not working correctly, which was why it was the one SCUMM game I didn't use the emulator for, and instead relied on Benny's excellent launcher. This was some time ago, though.

They work fine, but the transitions are not smooth enough

I bought the game off GOG and played it all the way through to commemorate the occasion. Yes, the music cues unfortunately still stop and start abruptly. It's a shame SCUMMVM never was able to crack that nut. The game plays flawlessly otherwise, though.

I bet Benny's launcher still works, but to discourage pirated copies of the game his software expects the game's registry keys to be installed, and I'll be damned if I'm going to exert the effort necessary to pull out my CDs and external disc drive. Now that an absence of registry keys doesn't necessarily mean you have a bootlegged copy, and chance of an update, Benny? ;

Really wasn't expecting CMI to show up on Steam. How does that happen anyway? Lucasarts is dead, Disney doesn't have its own game division anymore, so even though it's probably not that much of a process to get the game on there there are still contracts to be signed and people to be paid. I wonder who we have to thank for this.

Strangely enough, Lucasfilm still has a games division... though I'd imagine the few people that still work there are all MBAs and legal-types, and they're probably all bored out of their minds most of the time.

Interesting, didn't know that. I suppose it makes sense for Lucasfilm to still have something of a game division since they're licensing out Star Wars to various developers, so they'll need some people to make all of that happen. Really happy that there are still 1 or 2 people there who remember the adventure games fondly enough to keep pushing these titles out every once in a while. I have to assume it's mostly because out of respect for that legacy since these games can't be the biggest money makers compared to anything with a Star Wars logo on it.

Cheers to the nameless heroes who made this happen! Hopefully the future will bring more rereleases/remakes/sequels (Double Fine is perfect for that), but for now I'm just really pleased CMI is back.

This is a historic moment in GOG and Mojo history. I assume that Escape is just around the corner, assuming of course they're able to fix some of the bugginess. This is way too hopeful, but I'd love if this sells enough that Disney consider reviving the franchise again (stranger things have happened, Tales was announced with nothing to indicate renewed interest).

Since it runs on SCUMMVM, can anyone attest that iMUSE works? I recall the transitions not working correctly, which was why it was the one SCUMM game I didn't use the emulator for, and instead relied on Benny's excellent launcher. This was some time ago, though.

Really wasn't expecting CMI to show up on Steam. How does that happen anyway? Lucasarts is dead, Disney doesn't have its own game division anymore, so even though it's probably not that much of a process to get the game on there there are still contracts to be signed and people to be paid. I wonder who we have to thank for this.

Strangely enough, Lucasfilm still has a games division... though I'd imagine the few people that still work there are all MBAs and legal-types, and they're probably all bored out of their minds most of the time.

Since it runs on SCUMMVM, can anyone attest that iMUSE works? I recall the transitions not working correctly, which was why it was the one SCUMM game I didn't use the emulator for, and instead relied on Benny's excellent launcher. This was some time ago, though.

Really wasn't expecting CMI to show up on Steam. How does that happen anyway? Lucasarts is dead, Disney doesn't have its own game division anymore, so even though it's probably not that much of a process to get the game on there there are still contracts to be signed and people to be paid. I wonder who we have to thank for this.

Not like I needed an excuse, but hell, time to replay it I guess! Doesn't happen too often these days.